Monday, December 26, 2016

The Pirate's Debt by Katherine Bone and a #Holiday #Recipe

Thanks for welcoming me aboard ship, Lady Tina. The
holidays ARR a perfect time to celebrate romance and try out new things,
especially recipes. BIG hugs for organizing this #Holiday Romance and #Recipe
Exchange. I’m looking forward to the tasty additions I’ll be adding to my
recipe file! Huzzah!

As you can see, I love the holidays. ’Tis the season
for sharing and I’m especially happy to reveal one of my all-time FAVorite
recipes, one that comes from my days at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and the Old Plantation
restaurant. These rolls, large and with good texture, are a delicious addition
to any meal, any time of the year. I get loads of compliments on this one!

Old
Plantation Rolls

Ingredients:

1 Egg

1 Yeast cake

1 tsp. Salt

½ cup Sugar

2 cups Lukewarm
water

7 cups
All-Purpose Flour

Combine dry ingredients.
Create a well in center of dry ingredients. Add mixture of egg and water. Mix
well, working slowly from inside out. (Dough will be hard to mix. Once dough is
moistened, mix with hands, and then knead into a large ball.) Place in a
greased, covered bowl and let rise to double in size. Work down, pinch off a
golf ball size piece of dough, knead into ball, tucking edges under the roll
and pinching them together, and then place in greased muffin tins. Cover with
lightweight hand towel and let rise to double in size.

Heat oven to 400
degrees. Place muffin tins in oven and cook until golden brown, usually 6-7 minutes.
Remove to cooling rack. Serve warm. (Great size to make turkey sandwiches—I
call rollwiches—later in the evening or for lunch!)

When your feet are too tired to walk, your shopping
is done, and you’ve got spare time on your hands, there’s nothing like diving
into a good book. Here’s a peak at my latest release, The Pirate’s Debt, the
continuing story of the Black Regent in my Regent’s Revenge Series.

Lady
Chloe Walsingham is an enthusiastic gothic romance reader and hopeless romantic
focused solely on finding her perfect hero. She also happens to have a penchant
for getting into trouble. So when the man she loves disappears after a
scandalous duel, she decides to follow him to the ends of the Earth. To do so,
however, Chloe must evade her brother, an infamous revenue man, and board a
ship bound for Penzance. And nothing in her beloved books can prepare her for
the harsh realities of wreckers who ply the coast.

After his father destroyed the lives of countless innocent people,
Basil Halford, Earl of Markwick is willing to do anything to earn back his
honor. Betrayed by his blood and his reputation ruined, Markwick answers the
request of a well-heeled duke and dons the Black Regent’s mask to repay the
debt. His task? Rescuing a young woman who is chasing down a ghost of a man.

But a pirate has plenty of enemies, and Markwick isn’t any
different. No matter how diligent a captain he may be, sailing to Lady Chloe’s
rescue involves risking not only the Regent’s legacy but the last thing he can
afford to lose…his heart.

Seated in Markwick’s
cutter, cloaked in his clothing, Chloe felt incredibly shallow. To think that
she’d cast all inhibitions to the wind and sailed off for an enterprising
adventure, only to need to be rescued by the very man she’d set out to find.
Though she hadn’t known she’d be finding the Black Regent.

Regent sightings were
rare for the average villager. She’d never known anyone who’d actually met the
gallant hero that stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

Oh, to be sitting so near to him now, to have touched him, to be
in love with him, is even more exceptional than I imagined it would be!

She fought to curb the
jubilation pulsing through her veins, igniting her headstrong passions, and
forced herself to remember this was all about her devotion to Markwick and the
lives lost on the very ship on which she’d obtained passage. To anyone else,
the Black Regent might be a dashing pirate who’d just plucked her off the Mohegan’s decks and saved her from
certain death, but Markwick was also the man she loved.

She sighed, half
trembling, half in despair. Unable to tear her gaze away, she desired to
stretch out her fingers and touch the man, to assure herself that he wasn’t a
figment of her imagination. What kind of nightmare would that be, to discover
she was dreaming and that Markwick really wasn’t there?

Oh, but the blackguard
truly was just as she’d envisioned! In her mind’s eye, he’d been a
swashbuckling champion born from the pages of fiction and fantasy. Now, sitting
before her, was the living man whose very existence defied her infatuations
because he was the man she loved. Broad-shouldered, lean, with
a firm authoritarian profile, he stood a head taller than she did, and oh . . .
when he’d held her in his arms on board the Mohegan,
a lightheaded euphoria had immediately stunned her. Markwick had stood behind
her before but only to teach her how to shoot a bow and arrow. Not like this.
Never like this!

Her gaze lowered to his
upper arms. They were thick, flexing muscular limbs capable of sweeping her off
her feet at a moment’s whim. And oh, she wanted to be his Matilda. She wanted
him to be her Theodore.

Bother. Matilda and Theodore were Horace Walpole’s creations. She and
Markwick lived in the real world. She inhaled a breath of frigid, moist, salty
air.

Admit the truth, you
silly girl. Markwick triggered breathless exhilaration and the unbridled beat
fluttering within her breast, not the Black Regent. For her, there had always
only been the Earl of Markwick.

National best-selling
historical romance author Katherine Bone
has been passionate about history since she had the opportunity to travel to
various Army bases, castles, battlegrounds, and cathedrals as an Army brat
turned officer’s wife. Who knew that an Army wife’s passion for romance novels
would lead to pirates? Certainly not her rogue, whose Alma Mater’s adage is “Go
Army. Beat Navy!” Now enjoying the best of both worlds, Katherine lives with
her rogue in the south where she writes about rogues, rebels, and rakes—aka
pirates, lords, captains, duty, honor, and country—and the happily-ever-afters
that every alpha male and damsel deserve.